About Steven Csorba.

Artist. Cancer Survivor. Wellness Advocate. Community Builder. Joy-Maker.

Steven Csorba is an Edmonton-born artist (b. 1964), storyteller, and lifelong advocate for using creativity as a force for healing. For more than two decades, his work has been rooted in a simple belief: that being in someone’s corner — through creativity, compassion, kindness, and community — can change a life.

Before illness reshaped his life, Steven was an award-winning brand strategist whose creative work for clients such as Apple, Industry Canada, and the Department of National Defence was recognized by the Smithsonian Institute for innovation in risk-managed digital brand building.

Steven's first major battle began in 2003, when he was diagnosed with Stage 3 throat and neck cancer at age 38. What followed was a grueling ordeal:

A 14-hour surgery to remove the cancer
Seven weeks of intensive radiation treatment
Four years of recuperation
Eight reconstructive surgeries over ten years to repair a deteriorating jawbone

During his decade-long journey (2004–2014), Steven embraced Arts in Medicine Therapy and became one of the first jaw reconstruction patients at the Institute for Reconstructive Sciences in Medicine (IRSM) in Edmonton — later becoming the first patient to sit on its board.

Steven has long believed that helping others makes us stronger. Over the years, giving his time, creativity and energy to community projects became an important part of his life — and, in ways he could never have anticipated, a source of strength during his own battle with cancer and the difficult years that followed.

That service has included helping lead iHuman’s All In! campaign, which brought together more than 140 companies and 500 volunteers to help create a 22,000-square-foot home for vulnerable young people, and donating artwork to causes including the Buchanan Centre for Parkinson’s Disease, where one piece helped raise $260,000.

Steven has never seen moments like these as individual accomplishments. To him, they are examples of what can happen when generous people, businesses and communities choose to come together. He is deeply grateful that his art has been able to play even a small part in bringing people together, creating joy, and helping others feel supported.

Today, that belief feels even more important to him. Steven sees community as the abundance we all carry within us to show up for others — to offer kindness, creativity, encouragement and hope, whether we know the person or not.

Sometimes community is simply being in someone’s corner when they need it most.

Anyone can take a photograph of a flower, but for me, it’s never just about the image — it’s about being fully present in the garden. It’s about slowing down, feeling the energy, watching how the light shifts, and letting that changing rhythm guide what I see.

When I’m among the sunflowers, I’m not trying to capture something perfect; I’m simply observing what is. There’s a sacred kind of honesty in that moment — when a bloom begins to fade, when petals fall, and when seeds form to carry new life forward.

That’s where the real beauty lives for me — in the quiet cycle of renewal, where endings and beginnings share the same light.

Steven Csorba

Where Joy Began to Grown

This short excerpt from TELUS Originals documentary captures the beginning of my sunflower photography. During COVID, I began planting and photographing sunflowers—a simple creative practice that grew into the body of work and collection of images shared on this store.

Lessons from the Sunflower

Lessons from the Sunflower grew out of two very different parts of my life: what I learned through cancer and recovery, and what I began noticing while growing sunflowers in my own garden. I discovered that when a sunflower is knocked over by wind, weather, or the weight of its own bloom, it does not simply stop growing. It bends. It twists. Sometimes it grows sideways for a while, continuing to search for the light until, remarkably, it begins to turn upward again.

That became a powerful new way for me to think about resilience. We do not always “bounce back” or return to exactly who we were before something difficult happened. Sometimes resilience looks like adapting, bending, growing in a different direction, and continuing to look for the light.

Today, I use Lessons from the Sunflower in my wellness work with adults, educators, and students from kindergarten through Grade 12. Through photographs, storytelling, animation, video and classroom experiences, the sunflower becomes a simple, memorable symbol for understanding struggle, growth and hope.

It helps children and adults see that strength does not mean standing perfectly straight or pretending difficult things have not happened. There can still be beauty in the struggle. Something can still grow in difficult soil. And even when life knocks us sideways, we can keep growing until we find the light again.

Beauty in the Struggle

Sometimes the smallest moments become the most meaningful.

Beauty in the Struggle is a humble three-and-a-half-minute film created in a single day after hundreds of tiny sunflower seedlings appeared in our garden—just as a late-spring snowstorm was moving in. What happened next became something far more magical than we expected. A simple attempt to protect those fragile new beginnings turned into a story about hope, resilience, and finding beauty even when life gets difficult.

When I first shared the film, people saw their own stories in it:

“That little defiant army of sunflower soldiers! You planted hope.”

“Such a lovely and powerful message.”

“It is a matter of seeing and realizing the beauty in the struggle.”

Sometimes resilience isn’t about avoiding the storm. It’s about discovering something beautiful in the middle of it.